Home |  Elder Rights |  Health |  Pension Watch |  Rural Aging |  Armed Conflict |  Aging Watch at the UN  

  SEARCH SUBSCRIBE  
 

Mission  |  Contact Us  |  Internships  |    

 



back

Want to support Global Action on Aging?

Click below:

Thanks!

Some related articles :

  Cataract Surgery May Cut Older Drivers' Crash Risk

By: Alison McCook, Reuters Health

 August 21, 2002

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Older adults who have surgery to repair their cataracts may be less likely to have a car accident than cataract patients who opt out of surgery, new study findings suggest.

However, there is only a small reduction in risk--about 5 crashes per million miles of travel--and experts caution against assuming the surgery can make people better drivers.

Although people over 60 are some of the safest drivers on the road, previous research has demonstrated that older adults with cataracts are more likely to be involved in a car crash than their cataract-free peers. The current research suggests that surgery may help decrease that gap. This added benefit of surgery may be something patients and their doctors should consider when deciding whether to undergo an operation, according to the study's lead author, Dr. Cynthia Owsley of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

"These are benefits that those who have cataract surgery can appreciate, but are also benefits that may not be explicitly discussed at the time one is thinking about surgery," she told Reuters Health.

Cataracts occur when proteins in the eye's lens begin to clump together and cloud vision. All people, if they live long enough, will experience some clouding in the eye lens, which can increase the effects of glare while driving and reduce visual acuity.

During cataract surgery, doctors remove the cloudy lens, which is usually replaced with an intraocular lens, after which vision can be close to normal.

Currently, half of white adults between the ages of 65 and 74 are estimated to have cataracts, while the condition may affect up to 60% of black Americans in that age group.

Owsley and her colleagues obtained their findings from surveys of 277 patients ages 55 to 84 with cataracts, 174 of whom decided to undergo surgery. The researchers followed the patients for 4 to 6 years, and noted how many experienced car crashes.

According to the report in the August 21st issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the authors found that people who underwent surgery were 53% less likely to be involved in a car crash than those who did not have surgery. All-told, patients who had surgery experienced an average of 5 fewer crashes per million miles traveled.

"We have identified a way that crash risk can be reduced, at least for a certain segment of the population," Owsley said in an interview.

People over 60 have the lowest crash rate of licensed drivers, about 40 crashes per 1,000 licensed drivers, compared with 140 per 1,000 for those under 25.

She added, however, that the purpose of the study was not to increase the rate of cataract surgeries among older adults, but rather to help doctors and patients make decisions about whether the procedure is appropriate.

"Medical decision-making between patient and doctor will be a more effective process as patient and doctor have as much information as possible about the impact of the procedure on the patient's quality of life," she said.

In an accompanying editorial, however, Dr. Barbara E. K. Klein of the University of Wisconsin-Madison urges caution in interpreting the study results.

The decrease in crashes between the two groups was relatively small, Klein noted, and patients who opted out of surgery may have had other medical risk factors that influenced both their decision to avoid the procedure and their risk of car crashes.

"The limited potential benefit of cataract surgery reported in the study...should, therefore, be weighed against the risks of cataract surgery, which may include patients' fear of surgery, the inconvenience of surgery, and its cost," Klein writes.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association 2002;288:841-849,885-886.


FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Action on Aging distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.